Kerchal and Mann: Heart in the hull

GEORGETOWN, S.C. – It’s been 23 ½ years since Bryan Kerchal, the 23-year old reigning Bassmaster Classic champion, died in a plane crash over a forest in North Carolina.

Today, his memory lives on the bays and backwaters of South Carolina.

Kerchal’s old friend Chris Mann is running his buddy’s old Ranger 481 VS this week as a competitor with Team Vermont in the Academy Sports + Outdoors B.A.S.S. Nation Eastern Regional presented by Magellan Outdoors.

It’s the same boat the folks at Ranger gave Kerchal shortly after he won the Classic on July 30, 1994 and it’s the same boat he likely would have used to defend his improbable Classic victory a year later.

But tragedy snatched the young Connecticut angler on Dec. 13, 1994 when returning home from a sponsor engagement. American Eagle 3379 broke apart in mid-air 30 minutes after take-off and Kerchal died on impact.

A brilliant young star in the bass angling constellation was snuffed, but Mann wanted to preserve the memory of how he remembered Kerchal – and that was bass fishing.

The friends met in 1991 when both were fishing for the Housatonic Valley Bassmasters club. Mann, five years older than Kerchal, said he was the “kid brother he never had.”

Kerchal’s death still cuts deeply for Mann, now 52. He said the boat is their bond.

“His heart is in that hull,” he added.

It was only three or four months after Kerchal’s death that Mann asked Bryan’s parents, Ray and Ronnie Kerchal, about buying his friend’s Ranger. As Mann remembers, Ronnie told him she’d give him the boat if he sold his own Ranger 360 and dedicated the money to the Bryan V. Kerchal Memorial Fund.

Mann did just that. He fished from the boat when he was competing in invitational tournaments on the East Coast in the mid-1990s as part of the Bryan Kerchal Pro Team.

Mann had his own aspirations to break through the ranks and earn a spot in the Bassmaster Classic, which Kerchal did twice by winning Eastern Divisional qualifiers in 1993 and again in 1994, setting up his championship run. The same angling success didn’t follow Mann, but his friend’s memory and his rig have been part of everything he’s done on the water to this point.

The Kerchal/Mann Ranger is a single console craft; 18 feet long with a 15-inch setback to give the bow extra lift. The original 150 HP Yamaha Pro V is on the back.

It may not be the fastest boat on the water this week, and it’s surely not the youngest. But it’s safe to say this Ranger has the most heart behind it.

“I wanted the boat to go to somebody who knew Bryan,” Mann said. “I wanted it to go to any one of us in the big circle of fishermen we had in Connecticut. We traveled with Bryan; fished with Bryan. That boat meant so much to him. We’d be out in our little Bass Trackers, and they’d leak and were always breaking down. It was just part of it. It’s how we learned to fish.

“When we heard a big boat racing down the lake behind us, we’d turn and watch. All of us. It was unrehearsed. We were dreaming about it; owning a boat like that (and being a pro angler.) It meant more to Bryan than anything.”

“I wanted the boat to be here for him, in case he came back,” said Mann, his voice cracking with emotion. “I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s how I felt at the time.”

Mann has kept the Ranger in remarkably good shape. Its blue-tinted hull glistens as does the driver’s seat. The Yamaha still hums nearly a quarter century later. A sticker on the windscreen reads “1971-1994: Bryan Kerchal Pro Team.

“I went a long time with the original electronics he had,” Mann said. “But they started to fail. It was great to put new stuff in the boat because ‘Wow! This is so much better than the old stuff.’ But it was hard too, to replace anything. A tire on the trailer…I had to have the breaking mechanism done. Then the lights.

“I had to separate myself a little bit. We dreamed so hard of owning a boat like that…He was so proud.”